Thought Process

I always find it mystifying when I encounter programs designed to get kids interested in reading. I used to get in trouble all the time for having a book open on my lap in math class. I read by flashlight, by car-dome light, by the weak light that filters into the hallway from the bathroom when bedroom lights have to be turned off. I have an addiction for the written word that impacts every facet of my life, and, in a pinch, I will read just about anything. But there are a handful of writings that have so profoundly affected me, I feel they are part of me. One of the most referenced stories in my personal library is Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”--the tale of a future world where everyone is equal because all the gifted and talented people have been saddled with state-required handicaps to offset their superiority. I read it for the first time as a teenager, and have read it many times since, always with the same effect--a shudder of dread. The worst handicap, in my opinion for obvious reasons, is not sandbags tied to great dancers or hideous masks on the beautiful, but loud, train-of-thought-jarring noises in the earpieces of the intelligent making a coherent thought impossible. Terrifying. Descartes had it right and I’ll add a bit with poetic license: I think, therefore life has meaning. In Dr. Seuss’ inspiring Oh, the Thinks you can Think!, I find the antidote to Vonnegut’s bleak future. I think.

http://www.amazon.com/Thinks-Think-Bright-Early-Board/dp/037585794X

http://www.catinthehat.org/

I Speak For The Trees

Years ago, I discovered Fred Meyer, a giant everything-in-one-place store similar to Super Walmart but with less evil and awesome childcare. A few years later, the single California store in a predominantly Northwestern chain closed its doors. The mammoth building sat empty, in view of the freeway, forever while rumors swirled about its future. And then one day I came over a rise on the off-ramp and saw that the entire building had been leveled overnight. I was swept by nausea as I absorbed the magnitude of such obscene waste. Demolishing a ten year-old, up-to-code building merely because new commercial tenants (a Lowe’s built virtually in the footprint of the bulldozed warehouse) want something specific enraged me. I was angry for years. I’m still angry. I experienced a similar sucker-punch moment the first time I drove past Chico’s old Downtown Plaza Park and saw it laid bare in the name of progress, raped of all the beautiful trees allegedly so “diseased” they had to be removed for public safety but healthy enough to be replanted on the property of the developer. I happen to unexpectedly like the metropolitan feel of the new plaza, but it took me weeks to picture the gaping hole where the gazebo had been without tearing up. Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax is not subtle. I guess the narrative master wanted the message to get through loud and clear: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

http://www.amazon.com/Lorax-Classic-Seuss-Dr/dp/0394823370

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Dr._Seuss/

Pup Is Up

My mom raised four academically successful kids. That’s not to say we don’t have other issues and obstacles (because we do--just ask anyone who’s ever met us), but school has always come easily. Between us, there are three teachers, two authors, one attorney, undergrad degrees, grad degrees, professional degrees and enough post-secondary education to make an entire legal drinking-age person. There are any number of factors contributing to this--good genes, clean air, enough healthy food, subsidized public education--but I think the most significant element to our intellectual development was having a mother who is particularly skilled at teaching children how to learn. Once you’ve got that, natural curiosity has a place to go and a framework for what to do when it gets there. Not only did my mom teach us to love knowledge, she tutored a generation of other kids who needed help with basic reading skills. Most weekdays after she came home from working in a Special Ed classroom, she would have several children around the dining room table working on phonics and blended sounds. Kind of like piano lessons with more flashcards and less noise. It often seemed repetitive and tedious, but I have to give her credit because all of those kids improved or achieved literacy from those afternoons working with my mom. The book I remember hearing more often than any other was Dr. Seuss’ Hop On Pop. It was the original Hooked on Phonics. It’s also how I learned to spell “Constantinople” and “Timbuktu.”

http://www.amazon.com/Hop-Pop-Beginner-Books-R/dp/039480029X

http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/Themes/Dr__Seuss/

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

My first home had a dark, weathered, wooden fence around the backyard. On one side, the fence had a large gate that was always a little rickety until it finally came off its hinges one eventful Saturday afternoon. Seeing this as an adventure opportunity, my brothers and I drug the gate to the center of the sea of knee-high grass that was our yard to become a raft. Before setting sail, we stocked up on provisions and necessities. For me, that always included a baby doll. For this fateful rafting trip, I chose Baby Tender Love, but I had to change her standard shirt, bloomers, and pink booties, which were going to be completely inappropriate for an outdoor expedition. So, I chose my favorite doll dress: a hot pink, green and white little number perfect for playing in the sunshine. Unfortunately, the sunshine didn’t stay. It began to rain and we ran for cover, leaving our cargo behind to face the elements. Realizing immediately that my baby was still out there, I wanted to run back out and rescue her but my mom vetoed the idea. Sadly, I had to watch out the window for three days before the weather broke. Now, Baby Tender Love was weather-resistant but the dye from her fancy dress wasn’t…so her torso was stained bright pink forever more. I think of that experience whenever I read Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat. It was too wet to go out, it was too wet to play…


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cat_in_the_Hat

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/039480001X/

To Tell The Tooth

When you hold your first tiny newborn, a list of endless concerns begins to race through your mind. Surprisingly, one that doesn’t even register on that scale then will become your daily fixation for the next, oh, twenty years: teeth. Early on in your parenting career, those pearly whites become an obsession, or so it must seem to non-parents. When will they show up? Fall out? Grow back in? Need orthodontia? Have to be removed/repaired/replaced? It truly never ends. Since I spread my kids over the better part of two decades, I have some kid in each stage at any given time. My world and my checkbook basically revolve around teeth. And there are some things I really like about that. One of the traditions in our house is that no baby can claim to have a new tooth until they pass the “spoon test.” Only when we hear the distinctive Tink! Tink! Tink! of a spoon tapped against drooly gums hitting the edge of a tiny emerging tooth can we say that the baby has a new (or first) one. That is always a bittersweet occasion--the little one is growing, but the little one is also not so little anymore. While Connor’s teeth are being expensively straightened, Addison’s are falling out, and Keilana’s are being taken out, Scarlett is just getting some. Which is why we read The Tooth Book by Dr. Seuss’ alias Theo LeSieg. TEETH! They are very much in style. They must be very much worthwhile!


http://www.amazon.com/Tooth-Bright-Early-Beginning-Beginners/dp/0375810390

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_McKie

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=166971

The Wearin' O' The Green

St. Patrick’s Day used to be a big and pretty complicated deal. There were rules about what colors to wear--everyone=green, some people (either British or Irish or American of some descent other than British or Irish, it was never really clear, even to the popular kids who declared the rules)=orange. There were rules about who could be pinched and why, along with more rules about the consequences for pinching someone with hidden green (like the label-on-the-underwear trick). One year caused great concern in my world because I had to wear my yellow Rancho Simi Drill Team shirt on the day of Erin Go Bragh and didn’t have any green unmentionables to wear underneath. Knowing that I would be an easy target for people who only had one day a year to get in touch with their inner bully, I panicked and gave myself green freckles with what was apparently the most indelible permanent marker ever manufactured. I remember this because I was still trying to get rid of the bright green dots across my face days later when any quirky charm they may have had had long since worn off. Another tally mark in the hopeless dork column. As a Chico resident, I can’t remember the last time St. Patrick’s Day meant anything other than studiously avoiding the vomit and nonsense of downtown, but it did seem appropriate to observe the “holiday” by reading Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham. And maybe get a Shamrock Shake at an outlying McDonald’s.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Bampa!


http://www.amazon.com/Green-Eggs-Myself-Beginner-Books/dp/0394800168


http://www.seussville.com/seussentennial/resources1.html

I Spy With My Little Eye...

One of the best things about being a child, or sharing your daily life with a child, or only being as mature as a child, is that the world is more interesting and holds amazing new stuff all the time. Tiny versions of things, like miniature displays of camping equipment and trial-size anything, make you squeal. The yellow fire hydrant on your daily walk becomes a “chair” that needs to be sat upon each time you pass. Birthdays and rain stay wondrous. And almost anything can make you laugh. Scarlett, like her dad, has a really quirky sense of humor and two distinct types of laugh: a standard that-was-amusing laugh and a deep, from-the-belly, caught-you-off-guard laugh. I love it when either one of them (or, better yet, both of them) has a spontaneous moment of humor appreciation so the goofy (Goofy?) laugh shows up. It’s when I know they have really enjoyed something and their primal authentic selves are surfacing for an instant to take note of the absurd and wonderful. In Dr. Seuss’ One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, strange creatures with star-covered tummies and little cars abound and the tag line is: “From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” Which is certainly true of Seussland, Whoville, and the Jungle of Nool, where the author had total control over all things weird, wacky and Wickersham, but is also true of everyday experiences--if you know where to look and what eyes to use.


http://www.amazon.com/One-Fish-Blue-Read-Myself/dp/0394800133

http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm